title: The many faces of epidermal growth factor repeats.
abstract: Epidermal growth factor (EGF) is a short peptide with a distinctive motif of six cysteines. This motif is found in many different proteins of diverse functions. One approach to determining the functional utility of EGF repeats is to undertake a methodical analysis of each individual protein. While this approach has met with some success, it has been applied to only a small fraction of all the EGF repeat-bearing proteins. A second approach is to consider all these proteins as a whole but give particular attention to structural and functional similarities. This review attempts a broad, although not comprehensive, survey of the families of proteins containing EGF repeats, with particular emphasis on the relative distribution of calcium-binding and noncalcium-binding EGF repeats.
authors.affiliation: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Francisco 94143-0724.
authors.forename: C G
authors.initials: CG
authors.lastname: Davis
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D004815:Epidermal Growth Factor / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics; D016326:Extracellular Matrix Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D012091:Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid; D012995:Solubility
chemical_list: D016326:Extracellular Matrix Proteins; D004815:Epidermal Growth Factor